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Recently,
the IRgA began distributing a newsletter via e-mail, and, in the announcement
about the newsletter, the IRgA said that this newsletter will be e-mailed out
every other Friday. This newsletter
contains nothing more than an intro to news-items that’ve already been put up
on the IRgA’s web-site. This is a
service for those of you who are too lazy to check the IRgA’s web-site. If you weren’t so lazy, then the IRgA would not
have to waste time duplicating efforts to get news to you. Is this attributable to industry folks being
lazy, or is attributable to significant apathy in our community?
The IRgA
also recently announced that it will be publishing a quarterly index. Before I go further about the IRgA’s Index,
I’d just like to mention that the IRgA
Index is not sanctioned by Reprographics 101!
Here’s what
the IRgA says about this new Index:
IRgA is starting an important new
research venture, and needs your help! The IRgA Index will be a new quarterly
measure of the industry. The main component of the IRgA Index will be a
compilation of data about member businesses.
We are seeking 50 IRgA members
willing to anonymously answer a simple four-question survey:
1) Is your business up, down, or
flat the AEC segment?
2) Is your business up, down, or flat
in the non-AEC segment?
3) Are your equipment sales up,
down, or flat?
4) What non-AEC vertical market are
you currently most successful in?
We will email this survey each
quarter to the participating member companies and compile the resulting data regionally.
The data will be aggregated; no individual shop’s data will be identified.
An index will be created with a
simple mathematical formula that will create a number indicating the growth in
a segment, just as the monthly AIA Billings Index does for the architecture
business. An index of 50 will indicate no growth; anything below 50 will
indicate shrinkage; and anything above 50 will indicate growth.
In addition, a number of external
data sources will be concisely summarized each quarter, such as Census Bureau
housing starts data, National Association of Realtors home sales data, and AIA
data.
The result will be a
“snapshot” view of the reprographics industry that combines member
data with external data to paint a complete picture of the current state and
likely growth of the reprographics industry. Over time the index will also
provide a historical view of the industry.
Member companies that provide data for the survey,
and all Bronze, Silver, and Gold members, will receive a more complete
compilation of the data. If you are willing to participate, please email IRgA Managing Director
Ed Avis.
My comments about the IRgA’s Index, not even
seeing the first Index report (or the other reports the IRgA explains will be
forthcoming):
1.
50 firms are
not sufficient to produce an Index that provides useful, meaningful information
about what’s going on, revenue wise, throughout the reprographics
industry. There are several hundred
firms active in the reprographics business in the U.S.
2.
The
questions asked by the quarterly survey are “too simple” to provide useful,
meaningful information as to how the reprographics industry is fairing on an
overall basis. The only way to truly
track how the industry is doing on an overall basis would be to track sales
data, sales revenue numbers! Given the
questions that participating reprographers will be asked to respond to – “are
your sales up or down” – how does the answer to that help anyone understand how
the industry is doing? If you have 50
participants and 2 firms each compete in 25 different markets and 25 say
business is up and the other 25 say business is down, all that will likely mean
is that they are exchanging market share in their markets; that does not shed
any light on growth or decline in total industry revenues.
3.
Are we as an
industry that ignorant? Many
reprographers are timid about participating in surveys that ask for their sales
numbers. Why is that? I must be missing something! Even though responses from individual
companies would not be shared with anyone, even if they were how would that
possibly cause injury to any company? If
I know your sales are $2 mil or $3 mil or whatever, does that somehow arm me to
go after your sales? I’d have to know
who your customers are in order to attempt to take business away from you, and
I’ve never seen any survey that asks survey participants to publish customer
lists or sales reports by customer.
4.
Several
years ago, published reports indicated that reprographics industry sales
amounted to approximately $5 billion annually.
It’s my belief that reprographics industry sales are now in the $3-3.5
billion annual range. Could be lower than that.
If the IRgA is going to provide a meaningful Index, then make that an
Index that tracks total industry revenues.
Anything less than that is useless … and can prove to be very
misleading, especially for reprographers who are trying to gauge the future of
their businesses.
5.
NAR and home
sales and home starts data are not meaningful indicators of reprographics
industry activity. Most of the volume
reprographers do (or, should I say, did) comes from the non-residential sector,
not from the residential sector.
I applaud Ed
Avis’ efforts to compile and put out information that will help reprographers
understand the health of their industry.
But, Ed has never been in the reprographics business himself, and it is,
therefore, up to reprographers to tell Ed what type of information they feel
will be useful and meaningful to them.
Ed is heavily influenced by the IRgA Board, but they should not be the
only ones providing input to Ed on the makeup of an industry Index. Reprographers, please engage with Ed. He has repeatedly asked for your help and for
your suggestions.
Reprographics 101 